After finger-testing the political wind direction and getting a nation of angry fingers flipped back, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has iced funding for Quebec City’s proposed new hockey arena.
By invoking the deficit as a federal obstacle to squandering, oops, spending a minimum of $180 million to support an NHL arena in a city which doesn’t have a franchise, he’s clumsily backpedalled away from this very, very bad idea.
Unfortunately it wasn’t a total door slam — he attached an “IF” to any theoretical government participation Monday — but to classify building professional sports facilities as a private sector responsibility (absolutely) while observing the scheme makes for a lousy fit with his government’s push for restraint (duh, no kidding), Harper is skating for cover.
The prime minister has good reason to dash for the dressing room.
Harper was heading into a caucus meeting Wednesday to face MPs privately blistering with unusually harsh feedback from their ridings, particularly in his party’s Western Canada base. Some MPs confide the precedent of funding almost half this particularly arena’s tab, subject to inevitable price escalations, had soared to the top of voter fury lists.
The longer Harper kept waffling over the government’s unprecedented handout to wealthy Quebec City hockey boosters, the more damage the controversy was causing his party brand.
There’ll still be a high price to pay for his bait-and-switch politics, but at least the damage is contained to the spectator draw for one arena, not sprawled across nine provinces.
Quebec City hockey fanatics will attack the offside Conservatives at their rah-rah Nordiques rally on the Plains of Abraham in just over two weeks. A burning effigy of the prime minister is not out of the question which, frankly, would only boost Harper’s popularity outside of the city.
The decision is also potentially terminal for the seven thumbs-up Conservative MPs photographed in Nordiques hockey jerseys last week.
The Prime Minister’s Office insists those MPs engineered a rogue photo op, a tough swallow given Harper’s staff relish serving as master control for every news release comma, but it’s clear their boneheaded pose aligned their electoral fate with federal arena funding. Which means they’re dead.
They should’ve done what Public Safety Minister Vic Toews did when asked about his views on the arena. “Whatever the leader said, I stand behind what the leader said.” No wonder he’s in cabinet.
Harper should still eliminate any waffle room in his arena funding veto, if only to dash the hopes of other team owners salivating for a tax-funded arena replacement Canadians can’t afford.
There is simply no way to sell the concept for favour-able voter consumption outside of Quebec City.
Apologists insisted this fiasco could’ve been successfully spun as a Winter Olympic project which has nothing to do with an NHL franchise or Conservative puck bunnies chasing voters for a first-round ballot box pick.
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